


The Fire Thief

by incandescent (lmeden)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Going to Hell, Porn With Plot, not for the porn battle but should be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/incandescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon spins her and shoves her back against the steady haunch of his horse, feels the heat under his skin surge, and leans close to press a kiss to her neck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fire Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Spoilers! If you haven't read the end of ADwD, parts of this may well be incomprehensible. Also, please have read the Epilogue of ASoS. There is also a bit of headcanon here, when I mention Jon "breaking the Wall". I have the earnest hope that he'll bring the Wall tumbling down at some point in the next few books. And I tagged for Jon/Lady Stoneheart _and_ Jon/Catelyn, just to cover all bases.
> 
> This should honestly have been written for the Porn Battle XIV, but it wasn't because no one prompted it. Somehow, I was just wildly inspired. :)

Because he has no other choice, Jon calls out to her in a way he never has before (except once, when he was young and didn’t know better), “Mother!”

The Lady Stoneheart turns, her grey hair lashing around her and sword raised high. Her eyes are wide, and Jon feels a moment of pride that he’s managed to shock even her. Perhaps she thinks he’s Robb. A pang passes through him at the thought. He swings down off his horse and she retreats before him – but the fight still rages behind her, the man she’d been about to kill still lives, and her distraction is dangerous. 

“Ghost,” Jon says, and he feels the wolf move, darting ahead and into the fray. Jon moves forward and grasps the Lady, pulls her back towards his horse. His men stride past, swords out and eyes burning, ready to fight. 

She is cold in his arms, and she _hisses_ at him. 

Jon spins her and shoves her back against the steady haunch of his horse, feels the heat under his skin surge, and leans close to press a kiss to her neck. The gaping slash that caused her death is cold and raw, and the Lady screams at it heats under his touch. He breathes out, an instinctual move, and as his breath moves, her skin begins to knit together. He pulls back to let the fire do its work. She gapes at him as her wounds heal, and Jon sees that she is instants away from fury. 

He glances over his shoulder to see the last of the enemy falling, so he takes the Lady by the hand and pulls her along, back towards the camp and her tent. He doesn’t want to be in the open with her. 

She hisses again, spitting like a cat, and Jon rounds on her, fear churning in his stomach. Has it been too long? Is she forever damaged? Probably. 

“You can speak, you know,” he snaps. 

He turns back and resumes pulling. He feels her stumble along behind; she is unused to being touched, controlled. Jon hates to do so, but he has no better choice. 

They have reached the flap of the tent, and Jon is pushing it aside, when she wrenches back with a sudden burst of strength and breaks free. 

“Snow,” she rasps, and in her voice, he can hear the echo of the woman he grew up with. He nods, and her throat works silently. The claw marks on her cheeks look like the old scars of tears. 

He grasps her once more and yanks, drawing her through into the tent.

-

Her hand comes up to grasp at her throat, reaching to close a wound that it no longer there. “What have you done?” she asks.

Jon reaches out and takes her hand, drawing it away from her neck and holding it tight. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”

“Answer me,” she says, tension running through her arms. 

“I’ve restored you,” Jon sighs. “As much as was possible.” Her skin has a faint flush to it, and her wounds have closed. She is not longer so grotesque. 

She slaps him, nails curled inwards into claws, and Jon flinches back, clutching his cheek. 

“How dare you,” she hisses. “How dare you touch me? How dare you call me _Mother_?”

“I came because I could not let you suffer,” he says, eyeing her warily. “And I called you Mother because you were, once, the only woman that I loved. Until you showed me how foolish that was.”

He turns away and reaches for a decanter of wine, sitting on the single table in the tent. It looks completely untouched. He does not much drink, since the Lady Melisandre’s healing, but that is not the only thing wine is good for. He pours into a metal goblet and hands it to the Lady. 

(For all that her wounds have healed, she is still Stoneheart, can be the Lady Catelyn no more. Jon suspects that that part of her, like all the good and kind, died between the Towers.)

Her gaze is hard. She lifts the goblet before her and then lets it fall. The wine sprays outward, soaking into the packed dirt like blood. 

“I have no need of such frivolities,” she says, and pauses. “I do thank you for the gift of healing. It is… a boon.” She turns away and makes for the entrance to the tent. 

Jon darts forward and seizes her, dragging her back. She whirls on him and he clutches her close, caging her arms between their bodies. 

“Let me go,” she growls. “I will not be caged. I will not give up my duty. They must die for what they’ve done – to me, to Robb, to Ned. They must all _die_ , and I will not have a _boy_ I raised spite me.”

She spits the words into Jon’s face. He flinches, pushing his anger down. “You hardly raised me. You despised me. It was Father would raised me, and Maester Luwin, and the others at Winterfell. You did nothing, and you can’t lay claim to that.”

He drags her across the tent and flings her down upon the piled blankets that she apparently uses as a bed. 

“You’re not going to do anything until you start thinking clearly,” he says, and strides back to the entrance of the tent. He pushes the flap aside and peers out. The fight outside is long over. He watches his own men help the Lady’s as they clean up the bodies and tend to their wounds. He nods shortly and turns back to the interior.

She is upon her feet, crouching low and ready with a knife in her hand. With a start, Jon recognizes it, and his hand flies to the now-empty sheath on his belt. He refuses to draw his sword on her, so he spreads his hands. 

“I’m not your enemy. They are all dead, or fled so far from you that you’ll never find them.” He pauses. “My Lady, please try to calm down.”

She snarls, the expression somehow more horrible on her scarred face than when she’d been rotting, and darts forward to stab Jon. He catches her wrist and twists it, but she doesn’t give in and goes for his eyes with her other hand. He flinches back and she kicks at him, hitting his knee and causing a sharp flare of pain to flash through it. Jon steps back and lowers himself, dodges her next kick. 

Then, because he’s sick of the tension, he lets her stabs him. 

The knife enters his chest just above where his mail shirt ends, above the collarbone and below his neck. Peering down, he can barely see the handle. Panting harshly, the Lady falls back.

Jon rises to stand straight, the sharp pain of his wound crawling up and down his spine. Her reaches up and feels carefully for the pommel of the knife, grasps it. Then, with a single wrench, he pulls it free. 

There is no blood, and the pain swiftly ebbs. The Lady watches him, her eyes wide. He knows that the wound is closing itself before her gaze. He’s watched it happen enough times, himself. 

“So you, too, are dead,” she says, the anger draining from her and leaving her limp. “This is how you healed me?”

Jon nods. “I gave you some of what was given to me. It means I’ll die sooner, but that doesn’t matter – I’m not supposed to be alive in any case.”

He reaches out and takes her hands, guides her back towards the bed. Her hands fall into her lap as she sits. Jon watches her for a moment, but does not know what to do. He hadn’t planned to be here, but when he’d seen her fighting, he’d known what he had to do. He had to stop her, to restore some manner of sanity to her life. Perhaps it was the madness that had protected her. 

Gingerly, he reaches out and lifts ragged strands of her hair from her face. She turns towards him, gaze achingly sad, and leans against him. 

“My son is dead,” she says. “You are not my son.”

Her hands curl around his arms and her face presses against his shirt. Jon stiffens, anger coursing through him. It is true, though, no matter how he’s struggled against it. He will never be her son. She feels cold against him, her skin still harboring the chill of death. 

Jon pauses, then lifts his hands and lays them upon her back. He bends his head and closes his eyes, exhaling another breath of the fire that burns through him. She shudders. He draws her close and lets her stay there. 

Two broken things. For who else is left?

-

Jon wakes blearily and blinks at the fabric of the tent wall. It takes him a moment to understand that he’s slept, and deeply – such a thing has been nearly impossible for the longest time. And there is someone pressed against him; a figure slim, warm, and with hair long enough to have caught his fingers. He works them free, careful not to pull, and peers down. 

Ah, yes. The Lady Stoneheart. Or perhaps not. She appears much healthier this morning, much more alive. Almost as he remembers her. A pang passes through Jon and he pulls away, working himself free of her grasp. 

Her eyes flicker and open.

“Snow,” she says. “You have changed greatly.”

“I’m glad to see you looking better this morning, my Lady.” Jon looks away as he speaks. “I will leave you to your duties.” Hopefully, she won’t throw herself back into the habit of murder. 

As he stands, she reaches out and touches him. “You’ve just returned. Why would you leave so quickly?”

Jon has other things to do – he didn’t come so far South simply to find her. He hadn’t even expected to, really. This encounter was chance. 

“I cannot stay,” he says. 

She stands, places herself next to him, and reaches forward to touch his collarbone, where the skin is smooth and unblemished – where she stabbed him the day before. Her brow knits.

“I am sorry,” she says.

He sighs. “Really, it was nothing.” _If I’d worried about you hurting me, I wouldn’t have let you stab me_ , he thinks. 

“No. Not about that.”

What, then? The Lady’s lips purse, and she doesn’t continue. 

Instead she leans forward, and in mimicry of the way Jon had kissed her neck, she presses a kiss to his collarbone. He shudders and pulls back. 

“Forgive me, I must—”

But her grasp on his arm is tight, and he can’t force himself to pull away. She draws herself closer and runs her fingers through his hair.

“Ah.” This cannot be right. Jon must be reading this wrong, and it would be very helpful to the clarity of his thoughts if he could just back away from the entire situation. “No, I… Surely one of your men.”

She frowns. “And why would I want them?”

He knows, then. They have always said that he looks like his father. She pulls on his hair and forces his head down, and she kisses him. 

He tries his hardest not to respond. This is wrong, and terribly strange. But he can feel the heat under her skin, the burning flame beneath her lips, and he knows that he won’t be able to resist. The call of the sensation is too great. 

She is no longer cold and dead, but warm, alive, and _craving_. Her fingers flex, digging nails into his scalp. Jon flinches and she tugs, forcing him close enough that their teeth clack. She exhales, flooding Jon with heat, and he shudders. 

He lets his arms wrap around her and pulls her close, opening his mouth into the kiss. She shoves him back, and he stumbles away, panting. 

She advances towards him and his feet tangle. He goes down in the blankets of her bedding, and she lowers herself before him. Her skirts are dirty and old, ragged things that she obviously wears only for convenience. She lifts them up and leans forward, kissing him once more. 

Jon allows it, his heart pounding hard in his chest. She reaches down and presses against his cock, which is throbbing already. He groans, and she shoves him back. Jon lies against the blankets and stares up at the Lady. She shifts to sit over his hips, and grins. 

If it wasn’t for the fire that burns through Jon with every movement, the way that it flares when she touches him, he would be much more frightened by her smile. As she leans forward to kiss him once more, it looks as if she’s going to devour him. 

-

 _Cold_ , is the first word that strikes him.

It is as if he never left the North, never broke the Wall. He half expects his breath to fog in the air when he breaths out, but nothing happens. He feels weak, drained.

He turns exhaustedly onto his side, and sees the Lady standing by the entrance to the tent. Her sparse hair is pulled back into a semblance of neatness behind her head, and her dress her been straightened. She is working a pair of gloves on. As if sensing his gaze, she pauses, then turns to look at him. 

Instantly, a smile blooms on her face, crinkling the scars above it. “I didn’t think you’d wake so quickly,” she says. “But I don’t think you’ll be up for long.” She nods. “Have a good rest, Snow. And thank you. For all that you’ve done.”

Her gaze burns, and she turns and pushes through the flap. Jon hears her call to her men, and the flurry outside as they respond. 

Groaning, he forces himself up. He looks down at his hands – they are pale, so pale they look as if they’re been drained of blood. Every movement sends a spark of pain through him. A sinking feeling overcomes him as he thinks back, and realizes what the Lady has done. 

“Damn her,” he snarls, and with trembling fingers touches his collarbone. It is painful to the touch, cold and wet. As if he is wearing a stab wound never healed. 

There is nothing beneath his skin. Not fire, no life. He is so cold. 

She stole that from him. He meant only to give her a taste, enough to heal her, but she stole it all. She has taken Melisandre’s gift, and left him nothing. He had thought, just for a moment, that she saw beyond his bastard name. He’d thought that she recognized the man he’s become. 

_Never_.

He has freed her to hang once more, to hunt the lands forever in her quest for vengeance. He lets his head fall into his hands, and his fingers dig, like icicles, into his scalp. She has killed him even so.

He smiles to bitterly to himself, and rolls to standing. Where she is fire, he is ice. 

It may be time to see which gives in first. 

He reaches for his sword.


End file.
